


Et Nos Vivet

by Crescence



Series: Et Nos Vivet [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eos World State Post the Long Night, Episode Ignis Verse 2, Fade to Black Really Because I Can't Type 'Dick' Unironically, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Loneliness, M/M, Non-Explicit, POV Alternating, PTSD, Post-Canon, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescence/pseuds/Crescence
Summary: All that makes us will never fadeFrom this life to the other,Beside you, I remain.Ignis
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Series: Et Nos Vivet [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821565
Comments: 45
Kudos: 91





	1. I Hear You In My Bones

**Author's Note:**

> I gift this to Eggs. They know who they are.    
> 
> 
> Happy Birthday Noctis Lucis Caelum.  
>  You deserve a better life. In my dreams, you have it. Walk tall, my King.  
> 
> 
> This is a series of moments from my Et Nos Vivet verse. You don't have to read the other fics in the series to understand this but they do give it context, ie. how they confessed to each other.

The ground dressed in white and the sky stretched taut grey, winter looms above Insomnia at the arrival of morning. Noctis’ footsteps echo through the halls of the Citadel his body remembers as if by muscle memory; steps he could take eyes closed, steps he does take in the dark of night as his bloodline walks beside him, their voices carrying through the veil of time made thin. The lull in the turmoil waits at the end of a hallway, his single haven of calm in the midst of a storm he is meant to navigate. His knuckles tap on the door before Ignis’ voice invites him in, a slow swing of intricately carved wood and jade green spills into him from across the room. The hush of familiarity and the heat of longing fills his lungs as he walks in.

“Hey,” Noctis says, gesturing him to remain seated.

“Noct,” Ignis smiles as Noctis walks around his desk and leans against it, right beside him.

“How was the trip?” he asks him, soft in the silvery stupor of early morning.

“Tiring,” Ignis replies and Noctis sees it in the shadows under his eyes. He reaches with his fingertips to brush them against his cheek, to cup his face into his palm. Ignis closes his eyes and leans his head into his touch. “I think I’ve managed to convince the Secretary though,” he mutters without opening his eyes.

“Of course, you did,” Noctis smiles, running his thumb along his cheek. The green finds him, his heart sparks.

“They know what you did ten years ago to keep their people safe,” Ignis says, steady, full of quiet deference. “They know who brought the light back.”

Noctis looks out of the windows in Ignis’ office at the leaden sky, folds of gray whirling in the quiet build-up, flashes of light blinking in the distance without sound. His journey to Altissia replays in his mind like it was yesterday. He can almost taste the brine in his mouth, feel the burn of his armiger in his hands, hear Leviathan’s voice booming in his eardrums. Just as he falls into the memory, Ignis takes his hand in his.

“It wasn’t all me,” Noctis tells him. He weaves his fingers through his, looking at his face, his eyes flitting between the notches of scars on his pale skin.

Ignis’ hold tightens. “It was all you”, he returns, unfaltering. They linger in the reticence of memory and sacrifice, coiled and entwined by more than their history and the searing in their hearts. Noctis leans in with a hand on Ignis’ chin and kisses him, drawing in the exhale of relief falling from his lips. His sigh is no louder than the distant rumble of thunder as Noctis gathers it on the tip of his tongue and feels it seep down into his lungs, burning.

A week apart from him has left him tender and raw. His fingertips warm with the feel of him, his heart waking. Ignis curls his fingers around his wrist, his other hand rests at the back of his neck and he opens, giving. Noctis loves this, more than anything, finding him beyond responsibility and solicitude, the green of his eyes alight through fair lashes, feeling. It makes him want to bare himself open, to the marrows of his bones, to the embers in his heart and chase off the cold of winter clinging on his skin in its blaze. Nothing in the world feels as good as kissing him.

A deep sigh, a breath’s distance. Green eyes close to the surge of feeling. “I’ve missed you,” Ignis whispers to his lips, his nose pressed into his cheek. Noctis pulls back a little to gaze at him before he cards his fingers through ash brown hair, watching his Adam’s apple move in his throat as he swallows the last traces of him. He doesn’t know how he could watch him like this for years before all this and not do anything. All he remembers is yearning.

“I understand that there are trade deals we need to secure, but I want amendments to the duties of the Hand”, he tells him, serious. Ignis tilts his head, eyes bright. A smile springs at the corner of his lips, knowing him as no one else does. “Travel restrictions I presume?” he asks with humor. Noctis wants to curl into him.

“Something like, ‘the Hand must remain with the King at all times.’”

“The Hand would want nothing more,” Ignis mutters before turning his head and pressing his lips to Noctis’ palm, his own hand around it. His eyes find his again, all of him bared, “I have missed you long enough for ten lifetimes,” he whispers. Held back for so long, his admissions are still quiet, blooming at the edge of his voice like scillas in snow, delicate and tender. Noctis feels each one burn itself into his heart, losing his breath.

He reaches for him, wrapping both of his arms around Ignis’ neck and shoulders and Ignis pulls him in, settling back with him on his lap, arms firm around his waist. Noctis buries his face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in and feels Ignis run a hand up the length of his spine and into his hair through the nape as he shivers at his touch. In the leaden abeyance of early morning, they gaze out at the swell of clouds heaving with tension; silent flashes of lightning the only break in the interminable grey, their hands and hearts holding nothing but each other.


	2. Once For Each Memory

On restless nights, Ignis often finds his King at the glass courtyard he had spent his childhood playing among the trees and flowers his mother had planted with her own hands.

Not much of Eos’ plant life survived the Long Night, nothing green in Insomnia remained in the pitch-black dark with the density of daemons crawling its streets and the marble halls of the Citadel. He can still remember the barren hills across Duscae, the sound of branches and roots crunching beneath his feet like snow, the smell of rot and desolation oozing from the waters of Vesperpool, the sight of a field of sylleblossoms at Tenebrae, ashen and dead under the harsh glare of hunters’ headlights. He remembers the animal carcasses they would find all across the land, having nowhere to hide, nothing to eat, no way to survive. What the Night cost them, went far beyond the lack of light.

A week after King Regis’ funeral, Ignis found Noctis right there, amidst the skeletons of Queen Aulea’s sand cherries and crabapples with nothing but decade-old memories of the smell of magnolias and jasmines. Ignis stood behind him, listening to Noctis’ grief unfurl into the miasma of his loss, into the specters of his memory. His own hands curling into fists for not being able to kick a dagger into the void that held him in its grasp.

After working himself to exhaustion in daylight, Noctis returned to the courtyard night after night, with bags of soil and seeds and feeble plants that looked too frail to withstand a mere breeze. He and Ignis worked together, barely talking, clearing rubble and glass from plant beds, adding soil, tilling and planting seeds, watching daemon ichor and the copper tint of old blood trickle down their hands under the cold stream of water.

Ignis often found himself looking up at the night sky riddled with starlight, drenched in the silver of the moon, still taken aback to find something other than the crushing black of impenetrable dark bearing down on him. Constellations he knew like the back of his hand, trembled in the night like they hadn’t left for a decade, leaving him with nothing but the absence of wishes he used to make on their brightest stars. Noctis would touch his hand then, knowing, dawn of morning in his eyes and Ignis’ heart would quiet, his own darkness waning in his light.

Ash was a good fertilizer and nearly everything Noctis planted took hold, filling his garden with vibrant, strange flora; edelweiss flowers, grevilleas, birds of paradise and plants that have been altered so drastically in the sunless decade, Ignis no longer knows their names, sprouting and flourishing through the soil with hunger, the whole of it devastatingly beautiful and numinous under the soft touch of moonlight.

At the height of winter, Noctis’ garden slumbers under a veil of snowfall, his glasshouse a framed picture of color and smells with droplets of water adorning the glass, a sanctuary Noctis withdraws into when he can no longer bear existing in two times, his mind a parade of unsorted grief and memories across the ages. Ignis finds him one late December night, sitting cross-legged beside a full bed of sunflowers in the heated greenhouse, his hands propped on the ground behind him, gaze fixed to the stars through the glass.

“Do you remember the book of constellations we used to share?” Noctis asks him as Ignis sits on the cold ground next to him, his voice calm, hands steady.

“Of course,” Ignis affirms, his own eyes lifting up towards the clear winter sky, stars bright against the silken dark with the Citadel asleep. “I remember looking forward to getting it back from you every time.”

Noctis lets out a quiet laugh. “To make sure I hadn’t destroyed it?”

Ignis smiles. “No. It was because of those little notes and drawings you’d leave on the pages.” He also leans back on his hands, his knee brushing against Noctis’. He can feel his eyes on him. “I have…,” he pauses, “I have always been very fond of the way you loved things,” he confesses softly, meeting his gaze. The pale blue of Noctis’ eyes seems nearly colorless under the spill of moonlight, his midnight hair haloed in its glow. Ignis’ heart aches looking at him.

Noctis remains silent for a long time, watching his face, the sound of his thoughts a soft hum beside Ignis. The night sighs around them, full to the brim with the smell of wisterias and phloxes before Noctis eventually leans forward, bringing his hands down in front of him on his lap, eyes on his fingers. “Did you know then…,” he asks thoughtfully, slow, then he looks up at Ignis’, “-how I felt?” he tries. Braver, “Have you always known the way I have felt for you?”

A flash of pale blue caught in the rear-view mirror of the Regalia…

Hands lingering on his skin when Noctis’ magic misted over him through an Elixir…

His own name whispered sleepworn into the quiet of their home way past midnight, freezing him at the door of Noctis’ room, his heart frantic in his chest...

The way Noctis’ hands were shaking when he clasped the skull necklace around his neck…

The sound of him breathing in, deep and slow, as if inhaling the smell of his favorite curry when Ignis put his own jacket over his shoulders to shield him from the cold… watching him nestle in it in the backseat…

Countless moments scattered throughout nearly three decades of shared life, every gaze he noticed, every shiver he felt mirrored in the pit of his own gut, words they never said, every intention curbed, cut, withheld. Both aflame, neither able to burn.

“Yes,” Ignis tells him, the weight of memories ties knots in his throat. “And no,” he adds, drawing a deep breath. “I noticed… things. And despite my better judgment, I… hoped. Wanted. Gods…” his voice frays, “I wanted so much.”

Noctis reaches for him, his hand resting against his cheek as emotion shimmers in his eyes. Ignis could live however long he has left but would never be able to tell him how he counts every breath Noctis takes, helpless, how he would let the magic of the Lucii burn the life out of him for each one, over and over again if that was the cost. 

“It didn’t matter. I didn’t… couldn’t allow myself to think it was possible. You were the Prince,” he shakes his head, frowning, “I didn’t know… none of it mattered. I didn’t know how little time I’d left with you,” he mutters. Noctis turns to him fully, scooting closer until they are face to face, a breath away, the sunflowers each a star behind him, illuminated in silver light.

“I should have kissed you,” Noctis whispers to him. “when you took me out on a ride to the Cavaugh Lookout the night we slipped out of Insomnia on my birthday.” Ignis shivers with the sharp jolt of memory, so vivid he can see the lights of the Crown City in the distance, can almost feel Noctis’ fingers tangled with his own for the first time, something that meant more than either could admit… The way his touch had burned itself in his memory for years after that. How incredulous, ecstatic, terrified he had felt for what it had done to him.

Noctis cards his fingers through his, then lifts Ignis’ hand to his lips, the graze of his overnight stubble tingles across his skin. “I should have kissed you when you burned your hands trying to bake me that pastry the millionth time,” Noctis tells him and Ignis feels the breath in his lungs crumble as the vision of him under the moonlight mingles with the phantom taste of ulwaat berries. Noctis runs his fingers down his cheek. His fingertips graze across his skin, skate along his jawline and tangle with the chain of his skull necklace. Silver eyes ablaze, he stares at it for so long, Ignis feels time dissolve within the silence of midnight’s haze. He can’t breathe, drawn in so fully he is outside of himself, all of him a trembling knot of feeling and emotion in Noctis’ hands. “I should have kissed you,” Noctis mutters, his voice less than a whisper, “every time I watched you run your fingers along this with that look in your eyes,” he lifts his eyes to his and Ignis’ heart lodges itself in his larynx, throbbing.

Captivated and breathless,” Kiss me now,” Ignis whispers to him, words slipping out before he can stop himself and Noctis ignites at the request, the silver in his eyes sparking ardent, a quiet gasp rushes out, inches away from his lips and then Noctis is kissing him like he has never kissed him before, his arms curl around his neck, pulling him in and he can feel his fingers in his hair, others tight around the shoulder of his uniform and Noctis floods into him like a dam break, heat and friction in such entrancing, measureless abandon it makes Ignis’ hands shake. In the listlessness of the greenhouse, Ignis holds him in his arms as they chase the ends of each kiss they never shared, every single one more fervent, more desperate in the swell of desire neither had ever bared. His heart burning in his chest, Ignis drowns in the taste of him as his lungs overflow with his scent; so familiar, so dear it makes him want to burst into tears. He hears him draw in a tremulous breath, his lip caught on the edge of his own and the sound drops a match somewhere so deep within, the whole of him catches fire, yearning sears along every inch of his nerves. Noctis is a mirage made of night and silver, shimmering in his hands as their reflection falls on the glass, coiled and semi-translucent.

Noctis leans his forehead to his and they hold onto each other, panting, Noctis’ arms still looped around Ignis’ shoulders, his own, tight around his waist. They linger in the feel of each other, breathing in, dizzy with the graze of their lips as their hearts slow. Noctis nudges him with the tip of his nose and buries his face in the crook of his neck, the warmth of his breath against Ignis’ throat steals several beats of his heart.

In the quiet of listless descent, Noctis shuffles slightly in his arms, a shiver rolling through him before whispering “I uh… I am sorry about...”, he doesn’t finish. Ignis holds the back of his head and presses a tender kiss to his forehead, the feel of him bringing a hitch to his voice, his blood burning. “You are not the only one,” he assures him, painfully aware that it doesn’t need to be pointed out.

“We need to do this more,” Noctis tells him and Ignis nods, the thought alone quickens his glowing heart anew.

The moonlight holds them in its milky embrace and the greenhouse gleams under its light as the moon dips along the glass walls, casting inky shadows among stalks and branches. Ignis finds himself humming one of the melodies Noctis used to play on his mother’s piano in the grand halls of the Citadel when he was a child. In the stillness, he feels Noctis press a finger against his throat, right over his vocal cords, as if he wants to feel the vibration through his skin and it is such an intimate, impulsive thing, the hair on Ignis’ arms stand on end. He holds his gaze, humming, watching him and somehow it feels more charged than the feel of his tongue against his, or the fire still simmering deep within.

“Me too,” Noctis eventually mutters to him. Ignis searches him; eyes of morning sky cast under moonlight, all of him; the heart of every wish he had ever made on the stars. Noctis smiles at him.

“I have always been fond of the way you loved things too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://open.spotify.com/track/4qBva9xOk82fhCFPc52GjI?si=RrV8KMYDTCyHwi22hTUQ5A) is the melody Ignis was humming.
> 
> Two more chapters are already written and I am working on the fifth. I plan weekly updates. It will get a bit darker in the next chapter as they deal with the aftermath of the Long Night, both literally and figuratively. I'll add the relevant tags so please keep an eye out for them.


	3. A Decade Without You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Suicide   
>  There will be mentions of past suicidal thoughts and emotional anguish in this chapter. Please be careful reading further if this is a sensitive subject for you. You may also skip this chapter entirely as the chapters are not narratively connected. Tags have been updated accordingly.

The awful discrepancy between the world Noctis remembers and the world he now lives in doesn’t wane over time. Months after the Dawn, even after traveling to nearly every corner of Lucis to oversee and do everything in his power to help with rescue operations, restoration projects and rebuilding efforts, peering out at the world through the window of his car, he still can’t shake the feeling of being horribly displaced, of waking up someplace _wrong_ and distorted like a version of Eos that’s been drenched in the same viscous, poisonous matter that makes up his nightmares.

The sublime arches of Duscae extend fractured across a desert of swamps and split earth, mountains and valleys empty and barren until they touch the horizon, drowning in the cold glare of winter sunlight that accents everything that has been lost. Small patches of new growth among the endless gray look so fragile, so alien in its light, they look painted in. The whole sight of Lucis, the hills and woods and lakes and riverbeds Noctis used to know like the constellations in the night sky, lie unfamiliar and ransacked under the sun. He stares at havens without the Oracle’s light and a handful of animals without sight and feels the injustice of it burn holes into his heart. His blood’s magic is a gaping hole in the pit of his soul, a hollow well cracking in his bones with its draught and no matter how many times he tries, he can’t summon a flicker of light to heal the wreckage darkness has left behind.

On the second week of January, they ride into Cleigne through the Secullam Pass as dark clouds crowd the sky, pouring down the hills of Hulldagh Pike. Beside him in the backseat of the King’s new royal vehicle, a matte black Maybach Exelero, Ignis sits in his full Hand of the King vestment, draped in the black and gold colors of Lucis, green eyes lost to the desolation and ruin extending outside his window. It is in moments like this, Noctis watches him and tries not to think of him walking on this devastated land in complete darkness for ten years, from one ruin to another with nothing but the light of a single flashlight and the flickers of flaming swords twenty feet high in the distance. He watches him and thinks about the dozen new scars his hands have found on him, each with its story untold, a brand-new shade in the intricate, suffocating fabric of Noctis’ nightmares. Even when he is held in the warmth of Ignis’ arms at night, he still trembles at the edge of a precipice of awful possibility, so aware of the outside chance of their survival, it often doesn’t feel real.

Many nights he wakes to Ignis’ wordless gasps and the clammy chill of his fear Noctis can feel on his skin when he holds him. He knows Ignis’ nightmares are full of darkness and death, memories tangled with his deepest fears taking shape in the small hours, haunting him until the break of dawn. Even within the last few weeks they have begun to sleep in the same bed, with the fireplace lit for the light Ignis desperately needs, he is tormented so often by dreams, Noctis doesn’t know if he ever sleeps. He suspects all that keeps him awake in the day is the coffee he can always taste on his lips and that razor-sharp determination not even the Astrals could strip from him. Noctis thinks it may as well be spite.

In days like this, watching him with his shoulders drawn and the continuous, barely noticeable shaking of his foot, he knows he is closer to the darkness in his mind than the light he fought so hard to bring back, unable to outrun the eclipse of his own thoughts. For reasons Noctis doesn’t know, the closer they get to the dam at Callatein’s Plunge, the more Ignis clenches his jaw. The faint hum of the Maybach’s engine seems to keep rhythm with the tension rattling his nerves and Noctis reaches for him in the backseat, lightly brushing Ignis’ gloved fingers with his own. Ignis almost instantly stops shaking his leg, turning his hand and weaving their fingers together.

They sit with their hands entwined for the rest of the way, both looking out the window, one seeing an unknown world of unimaginable ruin, the other likely reliving moments when that ruin nearly killed him. When they arrive at the mouth of river Wennath, the grand bulk of a dam stretching before them for hundreds of meters, Noctis feels Ignis sigh next to him, the hold of his hand tightening. When they step out of the car and Ignis comes to stand beside him, Noctis gazes up at him. He searches his face as they wait for the dam workers and engineers from Lestallum to meet them.

“Are you okay?” he asks him quietly, the Crownsguard accompanying them stand a few feet away with watchful eyes.

Ignis turns his gaze to him and gives him a small smile. “I’m alright,” he mutters back to him in a voice reserved only for Noctis, low and tender. “Just a bit tired.”

“If you need to some time, I can do this alone,” Noctis tells him, gesturing at the dam.

Ignis shakes his head, his shoulders squaring. “No… I’m… I’m coming with you.”

Noctis knows he is brushing off whatever is bearing down on him but he doesn’t push him. Side by side, they watch the party arrive and get to work.

Damaged during the Long Night, the Callatein Dam is the sole reason for the devastating flood that sank Southern Cleigne into an uncultivatable, lifeless bog. Even now, water spills into the basin through two enormous holes, roaring and incessant as its vibrations carry through the cement and clatter in Noctis’ bones. The one closer to them at one-third of the way spits out the river in a foamy spill through a puncture folded in on itself like a massive bullet wound. Its mere existence betrays nothing of how it even got there. It takes them half an hour to walk across the length of the dam, inspecting the damage with the engineers and dam workers, the Crownsguard tagging behind them. With each step they take as the river heaves below them, the noise resounding in the halls of his heart, Noctis becomes more and more aware of Ignis’ hands shaking in fists on either side of him, the jade green drowning in the blacks of his pupils blown wide. 

He grits his teeth, the ghost of his magic is a phantom itch inside him with the urge to grab him and warp away where there will be no eyes and no ears to bear witness to his pain. All he can do instead is to fall a step back from the others and run his knuckles down the length of Ignis’ hand as he listens to the reconstruction options they are presented with.

When they finally get back to the car, Noctis signals his Crownsguard to give them a moment before getting in. Ignis is already leaning forward in the backseat, breathing hard through his nose, gloved hands clenched around the edge of the seat. The moment Noctis closes the door, he hears him speak.

“I’m sorry, I…” he mutters, his voice trembling, “I didn’t mean to...”

“Hey,” Noctis answers him, every instinct alight with concern. “You didn’t, we have a plan, we have done what we came here for. There is no need to apologize.”

Ignis nods, unable to meet his gaze and even with ten years out of practice, Noctis remembers every gesture, every sound, every twitch that speaks for Ignis when he can’t.

“Can I touch you?” he asks and hears Ignis draw in a tremulous breath, his shoulders quivering.

“Please,” comes his answer, his voice breaking, the plea in it is a decade heavy and strained with boundless longing. Noctis feels it cut deep into the meat of his heart, suddenly hit with the realization that as he laid captive inside the Crystal for ten years, Ignis had no one to hold him through the swell of darkness in his mind. His entire being screams at the heavens with outrage as he pulls Ignis into his arms, feeling gloved fingers curl around his suit’s jacket, Ignis’ face dipping into the crook of his neck. His whole body is shaking.

“I’m here,” Noctis tells him, feeling his eyes burn with tears. Even months after the Dawn, there seems to be no end to the things he still finds stolen from them in the last ten years. The aftermath of the Long Night stretches infinite before him like a minefield littered with losses he could have never imagined, exploding under his feet with each step he takes. From the sky to the earth, from the life he has missed, to the life those left behind had to endure, it envelops everything like the rain of ash that wouldn’t stop falling weeks after the Dawn.

“I got you,” he whispers to Ignis, turning his head to furiously wipe his tears on his own shoulder.

“I’m… Noct, I am so sorry,” Ignis gasps, coming apart in his hands and it terrifies Noctis to look at him and not recognize the guilt that makes him fold against him in the cramped backseat. He whispers Ignis’ name, caresses his back and arms and mutters reassurances into his hair without knowing why he keeps asking for forgiveness, his voice more broken and agonized than he has ever heard him, breathless and chocking around sobs that roll through him. He shrugs off his suit’s jacket and pulls it around Ignis’ shoulders, presses his lips to his forehead and gently removes his gloves from his hands, one by one, to let him feel the warmth of his own. He takes one of his hands and rests it over his own heart. To remind him how they used to do this as kids, how Ignis would sit on the bed with him, with tears in his endless eyes behind glasses that seemed too big for his face and a hand on Noctis’ chest, neither knowing why Ignis sometimes couldn’t breathe or why Noctis would sometimes find him with his knees drawn to his chest, rocking where he sat, unable to look at him. He keeps Ignis’ hand over his heart and listens to him cry with the weight of something so vast, he doesn’t know how he could manage to keep this at bay for so long without being crushed underneath. 

Outside, it begins to rain and through the tinted windows of the Maybach, Noctis watches his Crownsguard stand under the roof of a security booth with none of the dam workers or Lestallum’s engineers in sight. In less than a minute, the pitter-patter of the soft drizzle turns into pouring rain, the beat of it thrumming on the roof of the car. With his back leaning against the door and a leg bent on the backseat, Noctis holds Ignis in the folds of his arms and in the warmth of his jacket, listening to the rush of rain and the surge of his pain.

The rain rages and slowly, Ignis’ sobs dissolve in trembling sighs, the white-knuckled grip of his fingers loosening. His body sinks deeper into him, tired and boneless and Noctis aches with his weight against him, the urge to protect, the instinct to shield him from harm as old as the memories that still burn in his mind. 

Ignis shifts in his arms, turning on his side with his head on Noctis’ chest. Noctis leans his own cheek into his hair as Ignis wipes his tears with a hand. All Noctis wants it to take him home, wrap him in the sheets of their bed and hold him until he falls asleep.

“Noctis… I need to…”, Ignis mutters, his voice hollow and frayed with strain, “I need to tell you... why.”

“Alright,” Noctis answers him softly, feeling more worry for him than apprehension for whatever he is about to say. He has never asked Ignis to explain because Ignis explains when he is ready and only if he can. Ten years apart and Noctis still knows him like the stars know the rules of the universe, intrinsic and unremitting. 

Raindrops batter the car and the distant roar of the dam drowns out in a boom of thunder, a flash of lightning casts frantic shadows along the knuckles on Ignis’ hand that disappear in the blink of an eye. Noctis waits, the sky shudders.

“I came here to die,” Ignis tells him. 

The rain staggers to a halt above them as the downpour turns to static in Noctis’ ears. The words hang in the air and then each one cleaves into him, so deep, he can’t help the whimper that falls from his parting lips, his breath knocked out of him. Ignis sits up, turning to him with tears in his eyes, the jade green bare and devastating in the dark of the leaden sky. He holds Noctis’ face in his hands and Noctis places his own hands over his and he knows what Ignis will say so he shakes his head before he can finish.

“Noct, I’m-“

“No… Gods, no, Iggy, it’s okay… It’s okay,” he feels the hot touch of tears as he brings Ignis’ face close to his, leaning into him. “I’m… I’m sorry. I am so sorry I wasn’t here.”

“No… don’t say that… please… it wasn’t your fault,” Ignis whispers, his chin quivering. “None of it ever was.”

“I never wanted to leave you alone,” Noctis says, wiping Ignis’ tears with his thumbs. “Not in this world, not in that darkness…. Six, not ever. For ten freaking years…”

Ignis lowers his head. 

“I didn’t know… if it was going to work. I didn’t know when… if you… if you’d come back. Sometimes, for months, I couldn’t feel your magic at all. It felt like…” Ignis gasps, shaking his head, “It felt like you were gone.”

“It’s okay.” Forehead pressed to his forehead, Noctis cries with him. Then he hooks his fingers into the lapels of his suit jacket still draped on Ignis’ back and pulls him into him, wrapping both of his arms around his shoulders. “I get it,” he whispers to him as the measure of Ignis’ loneliness breaks fault lines in his bones, every inch of him hurting.

Ignis reaches for him and Noctis feels his arms come around his back, crossing behind him as he buries his face in Noctis’ neck. There is desperation in the way he breathes him in, the way he shakes with each breath, the way his fingers dig into his back. “I couldn’t do it,” Ignis whispers to him, his shoulders shaking, “I didn’t want to… die without you.”

Noctis raises his head to the headliner, visions of a hundred lifetimes, visions he was made to watch over and over again in the merciless cold of the Crystal, burning behind his eyes. Visions of Ignis, bloody and broken dying alone in the steel guts of Zegnautus Keep, visions of him standing behind him by a campfire, asking Noctis to let him die with him with unseeing eyes. Lifetimes without the man in his arms. Lifetimes in which he never got his sight, that brilliant green Noctis has adored since he was a child lifeless and glassy white. Lifetimes all the time he had left with him stretching between night and morning swallowed by the dark, not enough to tell him, not enough to hold him, not enough to love him with all that's in his heart. Lifetimes in which he would wake to a world without him. Without the flame of his existence dyeing all that Noctis ever known into every color he has ever loved. Lifetimes without his unequivocal faith making him believe he was more than the titles and the burdens placed on him, lifetimes Ignis never had a chance to make him believe that even if stripped of all of them, he would still have meaning.

“When I woke up at Angelgard,” he breathes around tears, closing his eyes, “you were the first thing I thought about.” Ignis pulls away to find his eyes. They stare at each other in the silvered gray of dusk, their grief soundless in the roar of the downpour; close like the space between the beats of their hearts. “I woke up to a pitch-black world, overrun by daemons,” Noctis tells him, “through the magic… you were the first thing I felt… first thing I wanted to feel…to make sure...”

“I knew it the moment you came back,” Ignis cards his fingers through his hair, long strands tangling between his fingers. His inhalation shudders in his chest, “all the Kingsglaive felt it. But I… I felt you reaching and Gods, Noctis, it was so strong and you were so bright. it was worth it.” The whole of the Lucian sea shimmers in his green eyes. “I would do it all over again. Everything.”

Noctis leans his face into his hand, smiling through tears. “You’d care for and pick up after the most frustrating prince for two decades?” he asks, overflowing. Ignis sniffles and smiles back at him, the corners of his eyes curling into dimples.

“You’d put yourself between me and everything that ever so much as look at me funny from weedy Sabertusks to robots ten times your size?” Noctis continues, every moment of his abiding devotion burning behind his eyes.

Ignis lets out a jagged, wet chuckle that falls on Noctis’ ears like velvet music. Noctis holds his hands. “When that isn’t enough, you’d break with _the_ _Astrals_ and make a covenant with one hundred and thirteen Kings of Yore to have the power to fight an immortal man for a few minutes at the cost of your own life… just to have a fraction of a chance keep me alive, you mean?”

“Well,” Ignis says, bringing Noctis’ hand to his lips. “I never said I am temperate.”

Noctis laughs, breathless and aching, wiping tears from his eyes. He then takes Ignis’ face in his hands, brushing his thumb over the notch on his lip and the scars under his eyes. “Thank you… for not giving up,” he whispers to him, his voice barely audible over the downpour’s din. They are two broken men staring into a broken mirror, trying to see in shards singed with smoke and ash what remains from who they used to be in the aftermath of ten years neither had light or peace. In his eyes, all Noctis sees is the truth of himself, the truth of who he has always been and when he speaks, it is that truth that falls from his lips, searing every lining of his heart and stinging in his eyes. 

“I wouldn’t last a decade without you, Ignis.”

A quivering sigh, arms that pull him in and it is always in the quiet of his unreserved acceptance Noctis finds the one thing that’s worth everything.

All that Ignis has ever been.

Home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was something I wanted to write for quite some time. But due to its sensitive nature, it was extremely important to me to handle this right. I absolutely did not want to romanticize the idea of wanting to die because the person you love is no longer with you. This is why there is no romance or sexual undertones in this chapter. Ignis' feelings about this are canon both in Verse 1 and Verse 2 and it is a disservice to his character to ignore it. It pains me greatly that he feels this way, watching him tell Noctis he will be with him till the end in the main game before Noctis tells him he will go alone, or the way he openly tells Ardyn that the world means nothing to him without Noctis in it. This is why Ignis is both one of the strongest and the most heartbreaking characters I know.   
>  I headcanon Ignis having had depression most of his life as well as believe him to be canonically depicted as autistic. Noctis is the center and purpose of his life, his one focus, only comfort and emotional attachment. This chapter delves into how he felt when he thought he really did lost him.   
>  I am not autistic and no matter how informed I may try to be on the matter or how many friends I may have that are, it would not give me an insight into a life living as one. So I asked a friend who does have that insight and he was kind enough to help me put it into words. I hope I have not disappointed you [twoluciankings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoluciankings), thank you for the gentleness of your heart and for putting up with my millions of questions.   
> 
> 
> Please know that life is always worth living, for yourself the most, more than anyone else. If you need help, reach out. From family to friends to complete strangers, more people than you will ever guess, care. And that... I tell you from experience.


	4. I Know You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags updated for the chapter because of non-explicit sexual content in the second half. It is time for Noctis and Ignis to have _the talk_.  
> 

Ignis feels the space next to him beneath six-folds of sleep. The vacancy under his hand feels like the yawning edge of a chasm that ferries his consciousness to the sharp end of awareness. Visions and sounds of his dreams peel from his mind as he wakes, the other side of the bed empty.

Noctis is a shadow, sitting at the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on his knees, silhouetted by the firelight flickering in the hearth in his bedroom as if drawn with a paintbrush, all but golden contour lines over velvet black. Looking at him, for one fleeting moment of vertiginous disbelief, Ignis thinks he is a dream. Taking a deep breath, he glances at his phone on the nightstand, the dim digital clock on the idle screen reading 3:42 a.m. He pulls the duvet with him and scoots down the bed, closer to him.

“Noct?” Ignis whispers. Noctis raises his head and looks over his shoulder at him, light eyes shadowed in the dark, tired in the spark of firelight. He extends a hand.

Ignis reaches for him then, wrapping his arms around him in the folds of their duvet, pulling him into his chest. Noctis scoots back, crossing his legs on the bed, leans his head back on his shoulder and sighs, his hands cold against Ignis’ forearms over his abdomen. For a time neither measure or acknowledge, they sit in the howling silence of the night and the flickers of amber light until the warmth in the duvet suffuses them to the brim, wisps of heat slipping through any opening like a hot breath against their skin.

When Noctis is finally warm in his arms, Ignis speaks to him, his voice no louder than splitting wood and the hush of winter wind grazing the windows.

"Are you in pain?"

Noctis shakes his head. 

“Bad dream then?”

“No. Just… thinking,” Noctis answers him, heavy and somnolent, leaning against his chest. He breathes deep and even, head tilted into the crook of Ignis’ neck, fingers loose around his arms. Ignis leans his own head onto his and closes his eyes, listening to the pace of his heartbeat, the rhythm of his breathing, as listless and comforting to him as the waves at Galdin Quay were when Noctis’ magic was a flicker of warmth in the rolling tide, a quiescent whisper in the wind, even in the impermeable darkness of the Long Night.

“I am going to abdicate the throne,” Noctis mutters into the space between them.

It is a statement that demands a pandemonium. It should stir an upheaval, dozens bursting into the royal wing and protest in objection and yet all remain silent. In the quiet secrecy of the night, it somehow feels all the starker, all the more pronounced; a declaration whispered into folds of their winter duvets and the easeful space between them. When Ignis looks down at him with surprise, he finds Noctis quite awake, his features worn with sleeplessness and old pain but alert in the soft glow of firelight, the meaning of his sentiment evident in the steadiness of his gaze.

“When?” Ignis asks him, astounded.

“Not yet,” Noctis replies. He turns his gaze to the glow of flames, the firelight gleaming like vermillion ink at the curve of his lashes. “Not for a while at least... But, eventually.” Ignis feels his fingers trace absentminded lines on his arms. “I want to abolish the monarchy. Set up a council in its place. Three Nations governed as one. Seven regions with a representative from each. All given equal voice. Elected by the people.” He looks back at Ignis, the calm in his eyes settled and sure; a decision made weeks, maybe years ago. “I will be the last king of Lucis,” Noctis tells him.

Looking into the tenacious earnestness in his eyes, Ignis remembers why he could never tell when exactly it was that he had begun to love Noctis. How it was nothing specific that took his breath away; no distinguishable moment, no momentous gesture. Instead, it was everything Noctis was over the entire time he had known him. Something he felt beat along his pulse every time he laid his eyes on him, an incessant undercurrent along his bloodstream, an ache that quietly bloomed and took root in the deepest parts of his heart, spreading and expanding like wildfire into something bigger than his frame, greater than all that he has ever known, shaped and ignited by the compassion in Noctis’ heart, the kindness of his soul and that humble, brilliant mind he never took credit for. Nearly thirty years after Noctis took his hand for the first time before his father’s throne, Ignis is aflame with his love for him, burning, feeling it in the lull between each heartbeat and the tingle of every shiver his touch breaks across his skin.

There is no end to the ways he keeps discovering him, day after day, even with ten years lost to darkness and ruin. Noctis unceasingly entrances him.

“That’s why you have been reading about Accordo’s parliamentary system,” Ignis surmises after a pause, breathless. All he feels is fierce, blazing pride.

Noctis nods against his chest, lost in thought, “If Prompto can figure out a way to reprogram those Niflheim airships for seeding, we will have solved our agriculture problem before summer. We can feed people. That will give us time to build the geothermal power plant with EXINERIS in Ravatogh. Jeanne is confident they can go operational in a year.”

“I would say Prompto’s success is imminent, as he was quite gleeful this morning that they can do barrel rolls,” Ignis muses and they both chuckle with shared fondness.

After a pause, “Is that when you want to abdicate?” Ignis asks.

Noctis looks at him again, pondering. “Maybe in two years’ time. I think right now… people need stability. It has barely been five months since the Dawn.”

“And just two months since the Merger of Three Nations,” Ignis adds, looking towards the windows in Noctis’ room with curtains of Lucian velvet drawn over the winter night, only a fraction of the sky visible through a gap. His mind is whirling.

“Do you think it is a pipe dream?” he hears Noctis ask and looks down to see a fraction of uncertainty in the set of his brows. The faith Noctis has in him is the only reason he lets it show and knowing it lights embers in Ignis’ heart.

“No, it is not,” he replies, impelled. He shakes his head, “It is certainly a reform that will require thorough planning and a solid transitioning strategy but it’s… it is a truly deserving cause… I’m actually… quite speechless.”

Noctis tilts his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I have rendered Lord Ignis Scientia, the Royal Advisor and the Hand of the King, speechless?”

Ignis can’t help the laughter that slips out of him. He smiles back at him. “You render me speechless more often than you realize,” he murmurs almost to himself, then feels Noctis card his fingers through his under the duvet between them, the look in his eyes softer than the honeyed glow of firelight. The sound of splitting wood echoes within his bones and the fire surges inside him. He holds his gaze, wondering.

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

Noctis’ smile falters as he sighs, turning his head to the fire as Ignis watches him. The firelight reflects in the pale blue of his irises, tips of midnight black hair drawing golden lines over the bedsheets on his shoulder. Ignis knows his silence is the stillness of the sea, the current of his thoughts rushing below the surface. He waits for him. 

“I keep thinking about the Long Night,” Noctis mutters quietly at last. “Everything I have seen since coming back. How people stayed alive for ten years. I wasn’t here. I didn’t… endure the life you all had to endure for a decade,” he bites his lip, his jaw clenching. “The darkness. The cold. The famish. Daemons. They fought, sacrificed, resisted it all without any help, without magic, without the Gods… without anyone telling them what to do.” He shakes his head, full of sorrow, full of heartbreaking deference. “They persevered on their own, kept Eos alive, with everything they got.” The blue finds him. “A graveyard full of empty graves. That’s all they got in return… What right do I have to demand their allegiance when they have already been leading themselves for a decade?”

As Ignis listens to him, he watches a string of memories play out in the firelight. Images that hound him in his dreams and haunt him in the dark corners of daylight. Children’s toys buried in the ash among the ruins of Tenebrae. Uniforms of the Kingsglaive smeared with the black, viscous ichor of the Starscourge. The sounds of hunters’ racing footsteps disappearing behind him as if swallowed by the night. A boy, barely fifteen, collapsing at the edge of Lestallum, covered in blood, hands clutched tight around a single meteor shard. Ignis closes his eyes. “You brought the sun back, Noct. We only held on until you returned,” he tells him, remembering. “Without you, all of it would eventually fall.” He meets his eyes. “There would be no one left to erect a headstone.”

Noctis holds his gaze, his thumb brushing over Ignis’ wrist, eyes gleaming. “It was you who taught me that prophecies can be defied. That no one is all they are ordained to be. You were willing to give your life to give me the right to choose for myself… I would have died for Eos if it wasn’t for you.” He takes Ignis’ hand and places it over his own heart, so gentle, Ignis wants to fold him into his arms. The blue in his eyes tints the tone of his voice as he reminds him with a doleful smile, “The King of Light was never meant to survive,”.

“Noct,” Ignis draws in a shaky breath, reaching for him. He raises a hand to cup Noctis’ face, thumb grazing his cheek, feeling Noctis’ fingers tighten around his other hand beneath the duvet. “If you want to abdicate the crown and found a republic in its place, I will support you and do everything in my power to see to it that it is done,” he tells him with all the resolve in his heart. His voice hitches, full of passion, “but don’t do it because you think you don’t deserve the throne… or the faith, the fealty your people have in you.”

Noctis lifts his free hand to place it over Ignis’ on his cheek and smiles at him. “It isn’t about what I deserve,” he tells him. “It’s about what they deserve.”

He then brings his hand between them, his eyes fixed on the finger that bears the pale mark of the Ring. “The magic in my blood is gone. There is no wall to maintain, no Crystal to protect. There is no need for a King,” he mutters before finding his eyes again. “If they still elect me when given the choice, it’ll be my honor to take a seat.”

Ignis cards his fingers through his, holding his gaze, his pride overflowing. He lowers his head in acquiesce. “Then I have no objections.”

Noctis smiles, tilting his head. “Besides,” he whispers around a sigh, his voice quiet and true. He looks at him the way he had under the lights of Hammerhead when he had returned from Angelgard, aching on the brink of wistful relief. “I have known for a long time that the Caelum line would end with me,” he mutters, something inexplicable and vast flickering in his eyes. Under the duvet, he rests his hand over Ignis’ heart instead, “I could never…” his voice breaks, “I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

“Noctis”, his name breathlessly falls from Ignis’ lips. The meaning of his words burns in the light in Noctis’ eyes as Ignis brings his head down to lean his forehead into his. For a searing minute, ardent blue pours into him, reverent, and Ignis loses the measure of his heart, beats stolen in the breadth of a moment Noctis tilts his head, his exhalation a wisp of heat against his lips. Ignis feels Noctis' hand close around the front of his shirt, drawing him in, and then they are kissing.

A timeless, boundless thing unfolds in his hands as Ignis opens into him. He feels it surge inside him, crashing against the breakwaters of his control, pushing, the warmth of Noctis unraveling him behind every door he had closed over the years to hide the interminable yearning in his heart. Noctis shifts in his arms, sitting up and turning to him as the duvet falls from his shoulders and pools at his waist and then he has an arm around Ignis’ shoulders and a hand dug into his hair, the feel of it breaking shivers down Ignis’ spine. When they part with gasps, Ignis falls into the pendent space between seconds, watching him.

Noctis is made of silken night and amber light, gazing down at him. His desire is silver like his magic, gleaming in the slits of his eyes through heavy lids before he closes them again to come back to him. Ignis shudders, hands trembling as he holds him, his breath a soft quiver against Noctis’ lips.

“You’re shaking,” Noctis whispers to him, the swell of his lips grazing his own and Ignis doesn’t know how to explain, how to tell him that his hands had curled in on themselves for so many years to hold back their deepest urges, that he wouldn’t let himself even dream about the taste of Noctis’ lips or the dizzying smell of him, the feel of him against him, the very idea of Noctis ever wanting him. That even now, it feels like a transgression, something that isn’t his to take but feels helpless in wanting like a fever dream spun with every thread of his love for him.

He doesn’t know how to explain to him that he is most afraid of waking up delirious in the dark at a hunters’ base hundreds of miles away when Noctis is burning paths of light on his skin. 

“Ignis,” Noctis breathes his name, forehead pressed to his, fingers buried in his hair, a hand against his sternum. “Don’t… hold back,” he tells him and it draws out a shattered whimper from Ignis, his hold tightening around his waist. Against the amber glow, his vision blurs with tears and Noctis stares into his eyes, breathless and devastating. “I’m here,” he whispers into the space between them, his fingers, shaking just like his own, trace the curve of his lips, the dip of his chin and then graze along the edge of his jawline. “I’m with you,” he tells him transfixed, knowing, always knowing, his voice frayed and unsteady. “It’s real,” he vows as tears of his own drown the sky in his eyes. “I promise you, it is rea-“

Ignis takes his lips before he can finish. He feels Noctis’ gasp on his tongue as he pulls him into his chest and kisses him the way he has known to kiss him his whole life, without ever trying. He holds his face in both his hands, before letting one fall down to his waist, fingers splayed at his back and the other hand tangling with his hair at the back of his head as he flows into him, the whole of his wildfire set loose. Noctis lets out a sound into his mouth that reverberates in the deepest halls of his bones and it is in a language they both understand without ever practicing, something so intimate it rips a groan from both of them. They tangle in a knot and come apart in each other’s arms, every door blown open, every last shred of control slipping away as they burn with a shade of longing so vibrantly bright, it blazes in their vision like the imprint of sunlight.

Breathless, they break off panting. Noctis stares at him through heavy lids, his hair in ruleless disarray, his eyes glowing. Lips parted, he leans his head back into Ignis’ hand and Ignis bows to him with reverence, pressing his lips against his throat. His kiss is so slow, so listless, Noctis lets out a tremulous, drawn-out whimper, its vibration feathering against Ignis’ mouth, pulsating along the ache in his heart. Heady with the earthy, delicate scent of him Ignis traces a path with his lips into the nook behind his ear, breathing him in and Noctis tightens his hand at the nape of his neck, fingers digging in, his chest heaving. Ignis’ name slips out in a hiss into the quiet of the King’s royal wing.

Ignis stays there with his nose buried in his hair, the sound of his own name echoing through his bloodstream as Noctis’ erratic heartbeat flutters against his chest. Each breath feels like inhaling plumes of fire, razing its way through his lungs, pouring into his gut and setting sparks along his nerves wherever they touch.

Ignis has never been drunk, but swimming in a haze of fiery bliss, he thinks this must be the closest he has ever been to feeling utterly intoxicated.

Noctis holds him the way fog enfolds trees before the break of dawn, suffusing and so complete, Ignis can live in the beat of his heart until time itself stops, wanting for nothing. He feels Noctis turn his head into him, mirroring, and the feel of his breath at the base of his neck draws another shiver along his spine. Noctis sinks into him, arms curled under his own and hands clenched around his shirt over his shoulder blades, his face pressed into Ignis’ neck and they stay in the daze of untrodden intimacy, infused in the feeling of each other as fire draws their lines in golden light.

“I love the way you smell,” Noctis sighs into him and Ignis feels his heartbeat trip, his breath leaving his lips in a shudder. There is innocence in his words, the same shade of the familiarity that binds them across three decades, steeped in the same innocuous comfort they always found in each other’s hearts and yet there is also an edge to it, a hitch to his voice previously kept hidden that tingles across Ignis’ skin as the hair on his arms stand on end. Noctis fills his lungs with him as if he hasn’t breathed in a lifetime.

“I love your smell too,” Ignis answers him, his voice lower and more unsteady than he has ever heard himself speak. Noctis lets out a mirthful huff and nuzzles against him in return. Ignis aches with his love for him.

Noctis pulls back a moment later, sitting up on his lap. He reaches behind Ignis to lift the duvet upon his shoulders again, silver eyes warm, protective. They gaze at each other for a long time as the fire they set loose glows in the rhythm of their slowing hearts. Noctis eventually looks down between them where his hands rest flat against Ignis’ chest and Ignis knows there is a question coming, one Noctis doesn’t know how to ask. He raises a hand and tucks strands of midnight hair behind his ear, brimming with love, waiting.

Noctis leans his head into Ignis’ hand before he lifts his gaze, silver eyes alight, curious.

“Is this…” Noctis tries slowly, tender and conscientious, resolutely holding his gaze despite the nervousness Ignis can feel in the tremble of his hands. “Do you want... this?”

Ignis’ heart kicks back into full gear as his lips part in short-winded surprise, the meaning of the question jolts like electric through his nerves, flooding him with such an instant surge of heat it knocks the breath out of him. He swallows wide-eyed before asking him as earnestly as he can, “Do you mean… sex?”

The space between them crackles, charged and heavy, throbbing as if it had a life of its own. Maybe it isn’t a question Noctis needs to ask with barely any room for doubt but Ignis understands why he does anyway and he is entranced all over again, loving him more for his regard, for the unique way he always notices even when doesn’t elucidate. He watches Noctis’ adam’s apple bob as he too, swallows, silver eyes flitting between his. Noctis takes Ignis’ hand into his own, speaking almost in a rush, “It is okay if you don’t. This… this is enough for me. More than enough. I just don’t know… what you want or… how much… how far you want to go. I’ve never… You never seemed to… I don’t want to… to do something you don't want- “

“I have only ever wanted you,” Ignis tells him before he can finish, without reservation and shame. He has known and accepted the truth of himself a long time ago, the part of him that never felt the need to seek another person, crave their touch, or feel the heat of desire. It had always been only Noctis that stirred that part of him awake, the physicality of his devotion to him an intense, acute undertone in the canvas of all that he has felt for him; another way to love him, another way to live him. Only at Noctis’ touch, only subjected to his gaze he felt so utterly ablaze, no matter how much he had stifled it, how deep he had buried it for nearly two decades in the deepest corners of his heart; first out of shame, then guilt and then the illusion of responsibility. "I have always... only wanted you," he repeats to him.

Noctis lets out a sharp gasp at his words, the hitch to his voice dragging on in an involuntary moan, evidently caught off-guard with Ignis’ answer before Ignis cups his face in his hands, staring at the darkened shade of his lips, the raise of his cheekbones, the peppered shadow of his overnight stubble still too subtle to graze, the glint of silver in the blues of his eyes.

 _Don’t hold back_.

“Noct, I want… everything,” he tells him. “All of it. As far as you want to go.”

Noctis shivers against him, breathless yet again, drawn in until their lips are barely an inch away. He wraps his arms around his neck and Ignis feels the duvet slide back down, Noctis' fingers brushing over the chain of his necklace at his nape and slipping under his shirt’s collar. His touch pours down his shoulder blades, hotter and brighter than the blaze of firelight. Trembling, they breathe in the rush of the fire reigniting everywhere at once.

“I don’t know… much about this,” Noctis admits, flush against him, so warm Ignis burns with him.

“Neither do I,” Ignis mutters against his mouth. His fingertips find the edge of his jaw, linger on the curve of his lips. “But I know you,” he whispers to him, drowning in his gaze.

The blue holds him, grounds him, ravels him. “I know you,” Noctis whispers back, all feeling, leaning in. 

Their shadows tremble on the walls, coiled and tight, as the sound of splitting wood and breathless gasps dissolve in their heartbeats. Both aflame, both burning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I'm vanilla, sue me.
> 
> Also I know you love free things, I love free things, but if you can, please drop a comment. I feel like I'm whispering into the wind.  
> 


	5. And We Live

Ignis’ quarters are a floor below his, at the end of a hall dimly lit by wall scones on either side. Midnight presses dark against the windows along the wall, a thick veil of snowfall obscuring Insomnia from view.

February has always fallen over Lucis quietly with blankets of snow, the noise of the Crown City muffled in mounds of white that soften the edges of everything buried underneath.

Despite abhorring cold, Noctis has always loved the stillness of winter. The heaviness of clouds and the slow descent of snow outside the windows always quieted his own mind, drawing him into the warm, comforting oblivion of dreamless sleep. When he was young, taking naps in snowy afternoons was his favorite thing, only to wake up to the smell of a cup of hot chocolate or creamy coffee Ignis would make for them. Noctis would take most of the couch facing floor-to-ceiling windows in their living room, nestled in soft Duscaen wool blankets with his head on Ignis’ lap, watching snowflakes fall weightlessly before a silver sky as Ignis read him protocols from meetings he was allowed to attend as the Royal Advisor to the heir apparent.

Noctis could never recall what was in any of those meetings but he never forgot how much he loved listening to his voice, soft and susurrous in his ears as he swayed between wakefulness and sleep, often nodding off with his mind in listless reverie, wondering what it would feel like if Ignis ran his fingers through his hair or if he could drag him down to lie on the couch with him and slept holding each other the way they did as children.

It took him years to understand why Ignis never complained about the arrangement even though Noctis would doze off nearly every time, rendering the entire purpose of learning his royal duties pointless. That maybe Noctis may not have been the only one silently savoring their indolent closeness, draped in the quiet of snowfall and the warmth of winter blankets. It suddenly hit him at eighteen when he opened his eyes one day to find Ignis asleep, head leaning against the couch, tilted towards him, protocols of the day’s council meeting fallen and pages scattered on the floor with his hand resting on Noctis’ stomach, fingers inches away from his. Noctis lied there wide awake for nearly an hour, watching him, aching with the heady pang of realization as his heart broke over and over again for not being able to reach out and hold him.

Maybe that’s the reason he feels an inexplicable sense of comfort, an intrinsic twinge of contentment when it snows on this day of any other day of Lucis’ lethargic winters. 

Noctis stops in front of Ignis’ room, his heart thrumming in his chest, every molecule in his body keenly aware of his presence behind the door. It’s been thirteen years since he has stood outside Ignis’ room just like this, his hand and his heart holding the same purpose, his entire being aflame with breathless anticipation. It nearly makes him want to laugh how nothing has changed, despite the years that have passed, despite the decade of darkness they had lost each other, despite the wreckage the Long Night left behind in their minds, Ignis is still the only person that makes him so brave, so bold and yet so devastatingly vulnerable, without asking for a thing.

Noctis takes a deep breath and knocks the door.

Ignis opens it without delay, still dressed in his uniform’s button-up shirt and trousers but bereft of his vest and jacket. At the sight of Noctis, his lips part with surprise, green eyes searching his face to make sure he is okay. “Noct? Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Noctis answers him, shaking his head. “I know you were going to come over later but…” Ignis moves aside for Noctis to come in and closes the door behind him. His room is as tidy and immaculate as he is, his bed leaning against the right wall in the middle of the room, made to perfection and creaseless, the entire wall across the room lined with books all categorized by topic and arranged in alphabetical order, a small desk by floor-to-ceiling windows stacked with papers and notes in neat piles.

Noctis has spent hundreds of hours in his room, both in their apartment and here, undoing its practiced exactness, dangling upside down from the side of his bed as Ignis tried to spur him into putting more effort in his classes while he sat on his desk going over his homework, hiding small pieces of paper between his books on the shelves with silly drawings and horrible jokes he had heard at school, talking him into sneaking out of the Citadel until Ignis would eventually get so invested, the floor would be littered with elaborate handwritten plans detailing their gateaways down to each minute. He has never told Ignis he has always loved his room because of how Ignis is imbued in every inch of it, from its perfect appearance to the unruliness hidden beneath to the way Noctis would go dizzy with his smell permeating everything.

Walking past him into the room, a step from memory to the present, Noctis turns to Ignis with a smile, standing where he stood thirteen years ago, his heart stumbling in his chest. “I wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” he tells him.

“Oh,” Ignis looks towards his phone discarded by the night table beside his bed. Even though neither can see it from the door, Noctis knows it is a few minutes past midnight on February 7th. Ignis smiles at him in that way that makes his eyes crinkle, “Thank you, Noct. I’d honestly forgotten.” Noctis’ heart seizes with affection as the green of his eyes shimmer softly in the light of his bedside lamps.

“You forget every year,” Noctis points out as he closes the distance between them, lifting a hand to his face and another to rest against his chest. “It is actually impressive how you forget nothing else but your own birthday,” he jabs, amused. A quiet chuckle, fingers sliding into his hair and there is no cue before they both lean in to kiss. Noctis tastes Ignis’ own smile on his lips.

It is almost too hard to pull back when he falls into him, no matter how often they get to do this now. Kissing him still feels like the reveries his somnolent mind used to conjure nestled under blankets during those pendent Lucian winters while Ignis was both inches and worlds away from him. The reality of it is still so fragile, he is afraid to pull away. At the tail end of each kiss, as Ignis leans his forehead into his with his eyes closed, sharing his breath, Noctis still feels like crying.

“You may find it hard to believe,” Ignis whispers quietly against his lips, his eyes closed before he draws a deep breath and endless green finds him, “but I promise you, it isn’t intentional.”

“Well,” Noctis runs his fingertips down the edge of his jaw, tracing the outline of his Adam’s apple until he finds the thin strip of his chain with the skull necklace visible through his collar. “I haven’t forgotten,” he mutters, his heart stuttering. His hands shake.

Ignis places his hand over his on his chest, tilting his head, eyes infinitely gentle, “Why are you nervous?” he asks him, seeing all the way through him.

Noctis lets out a huffing laugh, caught, shaking his head, “It used to be easier to surprise you.”

Ignis smiles, grazing the inside of his wrist with his thumb, “Or maybe I used to pretend I didn’t notice when you were up to something,” he hums and Noctis loses his breath at how comfortable he looks gazing down at him, his hair down, collar unbuttoned, soft and guardless in the amber light.

“I knew it,” he says narrowing his eyes and realizes how effortlessly Ignis has dissolved the tension in him; a gleam of his lax humor, the warmth of his touch on his skin and Noctis uncoils, boneless and steady before him. He stares into his eyes for a long moment, as entranced by his unassuming mindfulness as he has ever been. He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to his lips, still heady with the reality of him so readily responding before whispering to him, “I got you something.”

Ignis smiles a tender, sunrise of a smile; a lovely, stunning thing Noctis has only recently discovered and cannot get enough of. Then he nuzzles against him. “You know you didn’t have to.”

“When has that ever stopped either of us?” Noctis reminds him before his smile dissolves in emotion surging within. “And this… this is different,” Noctis tells him, his voice more frayed than he expected, quivering and low as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rectangular box of matte black. The moment it is in his hands, the tension floods back into him. He is 17 and 30 at once, the moment stretched across time and mirrored on two sides of his memory and it is still that shade of green, it is still that open smile that unravels him even with a decade in between. This is the only way he knows to tell Ignis that it has always been him.

“Déjà vu,” Ignis mutters, almost to himself and it is that familiarity, that visceral understanding that has always whispered between them that makes Noctis’ heart skip a beat and make him reach for his hand and place the box on his palm.

“Happy birthday,” Noctis tells him, his voice shaking, holding his gaze with a smile full of memory and feeling. Deep green falls from his eyes to the box and then Ignis lifts the lid and there in the middle of it, sitting in the center of a looping chain of silver is a small skull, glinting in the soft gold of Ignis’ bedside lamps. Ignis involuntarily touches the necklace around his own neck, an identical match of the one in the box and his brows draw in confusion. “A second one?” he asks, meeting Noctis’ gaze and Noctis watches him find the answer in his eyes, the true meaning of the gift dawning on him. His hand tightens around the box and his mouth parts open, understanding bringing tears into his eyes, his breath rushing out of him.

“Noctis,” he manages before Noctis takes his face in his hands and kisses him on the lips, taking in the tremulous exhale leaving his lips and pouring in all the feeling in his erratic heart into the kiss. Ignis lets out a sound between a gasp and a whimper and leans into him, a hand grasping the front of Noctis’ shirt, pulling him in. He takes Ignis’ lips with trembling tenderness, aching all the way through with his love for him. Ignis’ chest heaves beneath his hand, the small box resting against Noctis’ sternum as Noctis feels every incredulous, tearful gasp falling from his lips. 

He used to think loving Ignis felt like warping. It was a jolt of electric sparking through him whenever those keen green eyes held his, his heart lurching forward without a destination to hold on, without any ground to land on, always on the verge of tumbling off a cliff and losing every ounce of control as he plummeted into an abyss that would destroy them both. Yet, he couldn’t stop himself from seeking his eyes, helplessly wanting, his timid heart burning awake at every casual touch, mourning each one as they grew older and they became more and more infrequent.

He only later understood loving him felt like living. Not the dreary, duty-bound imitation of it he had done, hidden in the shadows of the Citadel most of his life, but the vibrant, electrifying sense of awareness that filled him whenever he was with him; the way his favorite curry tasted like music when he sat across the table from him. The way melodies they played together on the piano echoed in the hollows of his bones. The way he felt the breeze tingle on his skin when they used to sneak out of the Citadel, summer nights whispering through his hair and every mile per hour simultaneously calming and exhilarating him. The way he always noticed how sunlight lit embers of gold in the ash brown of his hair and built horizonless bridges in the depths of his eyes where he could forever warp and never lose his footing.

From the way Ignis taught him how to map the paths among stars for each wish they had strung in between, to the way he taught him that loving someone had no ending, everything worth living for in life was carved into Noctis’ heart in his handwriting.

“Thirteen years ago,” Noctis puts his hand over Ignis’ on top of the box, staring into his eyes, “I gave you this…” he tells him, his heart racing, his one truth swimming before his vision, “I couldn’t tell you why, I couldn’t tell you what it meant… but you knew.” Ignis’ chest expands under his hand, emerald green filling with fresh tears as Noctis holds him close, marrows of his bones pounding with feeling. “You wore it… every day since…” he whispers to him, his own tears falling. He picks up the necklace from the box, holding it in his palm, his voice torn to shreds, “And I will wear this… just like you have worn yours all these years… and now I can tell you what it means,” The green is endless, there is no falling, no abyss… only life, as infinite as his puerile dreams. “I am yours, Ignis… I was yours then and I am yours now… I have always been yours.”

Between two heartbeats, before Noctis can finish talking, Ignis falls apart. He drops the box on the floor, takes two steps back, and crumbles on his bed. He leans forward with his face in his hands, bursting into sobs that shake his whole body, the sound of his crying so subdued and strained, it cuts Noctis asunder. He kneels before him and folds himself into his arms, burying his face in his neck, crying with him for the life they had, for words they could never say, for the hearts they both laid at the feet of heavens in sacrifice and yet for having each other still to try again.

Slowly, they quiet in the warmth of their embrace as their hearts settle in silence. They caress wet cheeks with trembling hands and keep each other close with desperate arms. Ignis chases the cadence of his pulse across his lips, crying still, and Noctis unravels before him, drawing in every hitch in his sighs as Ignis pours into him. When they eventually still in the quivers of silence, they continue to hold each other close, fallowing.

Noctis rests his head on his chest and turns his gaze to the windows where specks of white in hushed descent gleam golden in the amber light and the night sky, heavy with bulging clouds, glow in a pinkish hue. He feels Ignis’ hand card into his hair, fingertips grazing lightly against his scalp and running down the back of his head before his hold tightens and Ignis presses his lips to the crown of his head, breathing him in, every inhalation trembling through his chest.

“I love you,” Ignis tells him. 

Nothing Noctis ever imagined in a wintry haze comes close to this. He lifts his head to find his eyes, the green is boundless and without measure, pulling him into every second across three decades that he lingered in their depths when all every fiber of his being felt was an acheful yearning. The words say nothing he didn’t already know, the truth of them as intrinsic and immutable as the course of stars, as sure as the ground he has walked on his entire life but hearing them still does something to him. A rimless chasm in the pit of his being collapses in on itself, welding close in the heat of it. He has lived so long with so many pains, both those he bears the scars of and those his heart has learned to beat around, he didn’t realize how massive the pain of not hearing him say those words was until the pain suddenly disappears. His breath drops out of him in two shuddering gasps as he hangs in the disorienting absence of yearning, his eyes burning and he wants to burst into tears with relief and he wants to laugh until he is doubled over with exhilaration, weightless… belonging.

“Gods, Noctis,” Ignis breaths out at what he sees in his eyes and then he is kissing him and Noctis feels like light in his hands, shimmering and featherlight and there is an entirely new kind of dominion in how their hands drag across skin and their lips move in near heedless indolence as if time itself held no meaning beyond the beat of their hearts. They kiss again and again, gazing at each other in between until Ignis holds the side of his face and tells him again, “I love you.”

Noctis closes his eyes and nuzzles into him until his lips find his ear and he whispers back to him, overflowing, “I love you, too,” feeling Ignis shiver against him. Then he tilts his head and looks down into his hand and Ignis places his own hand on top of his, his exhalation still unsteady before he picks up the necklace from his hand. Noctis pulls back and Ignis slides down onto the floor in front of him, his eyes burning into Noctis’, his hands shaking as he reaches around his neck and clasps the necklace behind him.

Noctis touches it with his fingers, holding Ignis’ gaze and Ignis is looking at him like he was looking at the sunrise burning over the horizon as the decade-long night finally crumbled in its breaking. He swallows around the surge of feeling, the knot in his larynx Noctis knows is throbbing with every beat of his heart as it does every time Ignis feels on the verge of crying.

“People will ask,” Ignis tells him.

“And I will tell them,” Noctis replies without an ounce of hesitation, his truth so blazingly bright, it feels like the magic he has lost, coursing through his veins.

Ignis lets out a sound between a huff and a laugh before he stands up and reaches a hand to pull Noctis up. When they stand by the bed, face to face, Ignis runs his fingers through his hair, captivated, the way he doesn’t refrain from touching him, still leaving Noctis breathless.

“Just so you know,” Ignis tells him, his eyes as soft as his touch, “I am quite certain Gladio has known for a long time.”

“Oh, I think they both know,” Noctis answers with a smile before he places his hand over Ignis’ and leans his face into it, feeling as loose and imponderous as the snowflakes floating in the night.

“I didn’t realize we were that obvious,” Ignis muses, his brows knitting and Noctis smiles wider.

“I think you and I are going to hear a lot of people say ‘finally’.”

Ignis draws close to him, solid and warm, lips gentle against his forehead. His fingertips brush lightly against the necklace around Noctis’ neck. “I can’t say I don’t share the sentiment,” he whispers to him.

Noctis looks into his eyes, his heart lurching still, then he twines his arms around his neck, a hand carding into his hair, pulling himself into him.

“Finally,” Noctis whispers back to him, living. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left, the next one is not as long, as it is sort of like a closing/epilogue thing. Thank you for sticking by this far. I appreciate you. If you can spare a moment, please leave a comment because it truly means the world to me.
> 
> I was really afraid I wasn't going to be able to post this week because I had a... really awful week where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong but I listened to my Ignoct playlist and spoke to someone who feels as deeply about them as I do and I was able to finish it. Thank you Roland for listening and being there. You are always there in my mornings, full of light and kindness. You soften everything around you, from dreadful Monday mornings to the harshest words my mind will shout at me. Please know that you deserve everything you dream of.   
> 


	6. All That Makes Us

Noctis stands in front of the tall sun-glazed windows of their apartment, clad in every color of summer. Early sunlight shimmers in his night-black hair like the face of a blue goldstone. Acute-angled rays beam through leaning clouds, casting pale rainbows through the glass along his arms that disappear in the black of his arm brace. In the glow of morning, he barely looks 20; wistful and lost, standing before the gilded skyline of Insomnia like another mystical thing made from light and shadow; something ethereal, wavering between reality and dream.

Ignis keeps behind him by the door of their living room, watching him as he has watched him for nearly two decades. Their entire history is packed away in boxes and piled into heaps of plastic bags around them to be hauled to the Citadel, to be split in two and tucked away where they won’t mix again. Speckles of dust gleam lethargically in the light, floating between cardboard boxes and visions of Ignis’ memory playing out in every corner of the apartment that used to be their home. From redolent evenings they’d spend at their kitchen table as muffins and pies baked in the oven, to vibrant nights they would sit close on the couch making bets with house chores on games they played in front of the TV. From study sessions that often failed its purpose when Noctis dozed off with his face on his textbooks or when Ignis got distracted watching Noctis’ fingers tap the side of the table, playing music only he could hear on an invisible piano as Ignis tried to reconstruct the music in his mind, to mornings they would move around each other in the bathroom before school, one dressed to sleek perfection, the other drowsy with a mop of black hair sticking out in every direction…

There, in the empty space between them, were countless moments of rainy weekend afternoons he’d lay soft blankets over Noctis sleeping on the couch…

Behind him, at the edge of the kitchen, was where they had a fight for the first time, both overwhelmed, both tongue-tied and equally helpless, not knowing how to reach out and explain to one another what boiled them to ruin under their skin and how scared they both were of change, as it came barreling at them with the speed of a car wreck.

Watching his Prince linger at the edge of his future, moments away from walking out of the life he has known since he was a child into one defined by duty and renouncement, all Ignis feels is a massive, searing wave of loss, so heavy, his bones crackle under its weight, so deep, his breaths fall short before surfacing, his throat a throbbing graveyard with the phantom etching of every word left unsaid.

He has spent years preparing himself and Noctis for this moment, when Noctis would assume the mantle of his title and be asked to bear the burden of his lineage and yet Ignis feels more flat-footed than he has ever felt, unschooled and inadequate in every way to ground him, to advise him, to watch over him. In the deepest nooks of his heart, there is a war waging between the pride he feels for the man Noctis has become and the sorrow that leaves him breathless for their imminent parting. Years of study, hundreds of hours spent learning every intricate way to influence and bargain, to utilize every weapon he can wield and every word in every language he can speak, and yet he cannot reason with the part of his heart to settle as it tears into pieces while he watches him, can’t reconcile the agony howling in his bones with every tick of his watch that he can hear in the quiet of morning.

He knows it is selfish, and as he painfully learned to hold himself back behind the lines that stretched between them, that has always been the one thing he hasn't allowed himself to be. But teetering at the cusp of their history, with the entire width of their lives’ memories shimmering in the early summer sun, he can’t help missing Noctis with every fiber of his being even though he is yet standing there in front of him.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, the humming sound dropping abruptly onto the thin sheet of silence extending between them. Ignis knows it is a message from Gladio letting him know that he has finished packing the car and they should go down and set out for their journey to Altissia. He swallows around the knot in his throat before he draws near Noctis.

“Time to go?” Noctis asks quietly before Ignis can speak, his back to him. Ignis doesn’t need to see his face to know he is all but quiet deep within, the chains of his bloodline rattling around his neck with each breath he takes, chocking him. Noctis has never wanted the life he has been watching slowly kill his father. A life where his every choice is predestined, made for him, every moment laid at the feet of his grand calling, all that his father loved, kept at the edge of his reach, stood up, left hanging.

“Gladio’s waiting,” Ignis tells him and there is an edge to his voice he didn’t calculate, a quiver that flickers through for a mere second and before guilt can bloom loose inside him, Noctis turns to him, knowing. The summer sky behind him spills through his eyes. Ignis feels every sound inside him quiet.

A deep breath, iridescent blue falls from his, and Noctis knits his brows.

“What is that?” 

His heart lurching, Ignis raises his hand and holds up the Book of Constellations they used to share as children. Its glossy, navy blue cover gleams under the morning light; the broken spine and colorful page markers sticking out between the pages whisper the story of dozens, hundreds of memories held within.

Noctis draws closer to him and the smile that trembles at the corner of his mouth aches through Ignis.

“I didn’t think you still had this,” Noctis mutters before placing a hand on top of it, reliving every memory playing behind Ignis’ eyelids.

“Of course, I do,” Ignis almost whispers to him, every line between them cutting into his skin. The ticking sound of his watch pulsates through his bloodstream.

He draws in a tremulous breath, Noctis’ gaze finds him, asking, and Ignis begs the heavens to forgive him for his one transgression, for the only time he will ever breach the lines in between.

“I figured,” Ignis begins, holding onto his voice so tight it frays under the weight, rupturing fissures along each word. Noctis holds his gaze. Ignis knows he isn’t the only one not breathing. “I figured it is my turn,” he says, his hands shaking, “T-to leave you a note.”

Noctis looks down at the book and then slowly takes it from him. Ignis watches him open it and sees his own handwriting stick out among Noctis’ scribbles on the first page. He has written so many discarded versions of this note to him, he knows it by heart, every word resounding in the rooms of his mind even without him reading it. 

_All that makes us will never fade.  
_ _From this life to the other,  
_ _Beside you, I remain._

_\- Ignis_

  
Noctis reads the note, his mouth parts and he takes a shaky breath that breaks apart on its way out. Ignis feels his own eyes burn with feeling as Noctis looks away, his jaw clenched, lips trembling as he breaths through his nose, his chest heaving with the effort to hold back. Standing among the crumpled compilation of their shared life drenched in honeyed light, they are at an arm’s distance away from each other, giving up their hearts and Ignis’ hands tighten into fists with the unrealizable urge to reach out and hold him, to tell him with more than lines of ink on paper that although he is too weak to change Noctis’ fate, too powerless to defy the chains that bind him and give him the right to choose for himself, he will never be a thing Noctis loses, regardless of the title he holds or who walks beside him.

This is the farthest Ignis has ever dared to cross the lines between but this… This is his one truth, the one thing he needs Noctis to know more than anything, now more than ever, that there is no end to the life they have shared, that he is as defined by Noctis as he is defined by the years he has spent treading the halls of the Citadel. All that makes him is molded in his hands, all of life he has known is his making, and no matter where his fate takes him, no matter what Noctis must renounce for the sake of his Kingdom, he will be right there beside him, whenever he needs him.

Ignis feels like his throat is on the verge of splitting open, the pain of all that's unspoken searing through him as Noctis rubs at his eyes, the Book of Constellations still in his hand. Then, Noctis lifts his gaze, the blues of his eyes drowning beneath an ocean of sadness, pouring into him and Ignis understands with a clarity that pulls the ground under him that Noctis knows every word he doesn’t say. They stare at each other as the shards of the silence that shattered between them gleam in the sun, falling around them in muted listlessness. Then Noctis moves, a step forward into untrodden land, a breach for his breach, and Ignis is in his arms.

Noctis holds him tighter than he has ever dared, arms wrapped around his shoulders, the Book of Constellations pressed between his shoulder blades and the crown of his head just below his chin, the feel of him warm like memory and forbidden like sin. Behind his glasses, tears blur his vision as Ignis returns the embrace, holding him the way they were always meant to hold each other, for the first and the last time. 

“I won’t ask you to promise,” Noctis whispers, his voice broken beyond measure, crying onto his shoulder.

“You know… you know you don’t need to,” Ignis returns, turning his head to take off his glasses and wipe his own tears with a gloved hand. They hold each other until their breathing slows and their hearts quiet, everything that makes them, whispering between in that single moment.

Noctis leaves the book in a box marked to be his as Ignis watches his hand rest on the cover, a valediction to the wishes they used to make on the stars. His adam’s apple bobs before he stands upright, blue eyes endless in the morning light breaking around him.

Noctis has known sacrifice since he was too young to even have to know its meaning. They nod at each other and walk out of their apartment for the last time. All they leave behind in the gold of summer light, inscribed on the walls of their hearts, beating. 

* * *

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done. I have lost count of how many times I teared up writing this. Hopefully, it ties up all the entries in the Et Nos Vivet series, now the circle is complete. This is my heart's gift to Noctis and Ignis. In your minds and mine, in so many versions, they get to be happy and together and this is my version, written with all the love I have in my heart for them.
> 
> I don't think I'll write another multichapter fic for Noctis and Ignis because I am now at peace. They are safe and together and on the way to healing. 
> 
> However, if you have read this fic all the way, first of all, thank you. Secondly, if any particular memory remembered by Ignis or Noctis drew your attention, if there is any moment you would like to see a one-shot of, from any of the fics in my Et Nos Vivet series, comment below and I'll see if I can do it. If I do write it, I'll gift it to you by username so you'll definitely get a notification. 
> 
> Thank you for sticking by me. I'd love it if you could drop a comment, there is so much hesitation and self-doubt woven into all this, you have no idea how every word helps.


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